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Saturday 22 October 2016

Best of the London Film Festival 2016: La La Land

This was the perfect start to a Saturday morning! Frankly, if every morning started with La La Land, the world would be a better place.

I don’t get on with musicals, but this hooked me if not from the opening of the first scene, then certainly the first angry exchange between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

There are others actors in this film, but the film really belongs to Stone. Yes, Gosling adds singing and dancing to his brooding film repertoire, but this is Stone’s moment. So far she’s got two Golden Globe noms, one BAFTA and one Oscar, but this will send her into the stratosphere. Indeed Screen US editor Jeremy Kay had this to say in his recent awards season previewpiece: “This is an ‘Audrey Hepburn’ moment for Stone – just as Silver Linings Playbook was for Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence – and voters will fall in love with her as the season progresses.

And he’s damn right! In films like Zombieland, Easy A and Birdman, the cameras fell in love with her, and while La La Land doesn’t offer a stand-out scene like her harrowing critique of her father in Birdman, it does allow her to be front and centre for the vast majority of the film and shows her maturing, reeling her usual fire in a little to allow for some more depth.

Part of that is due to Damien Chazelle’s script and direction. While nominally a boy-meets-girl love story (that absolutely works thanks to the real spark between the two leads), the film’s real focus is on chasing dreams and what happens when you realise them. There is a bitter sweetness at the film’s core that lifts it above the obvious rom-com, which left me a bit of a blubbery mess at the end. I am, if nothing else, a romantic at heart.

If you have an ounce of romance in you, you will fall in love with this too.
Score: 10/10

UK release date: 13 January 2017

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